The problem with just about every virtual desktop implementation is just that - they're virtual. This means that beyond the ability to move windows to specific desktops, you're still looking at exactly the same desktop, no matter what virtual desktop number you switched to. A mockup for GNOME Shell is trying to take the virtual out of virtual desktop.

I always thoroughly disliked the concept of virtual desktops. I found them far too virtual to keep track of them - that is, until the Compiz developers came up with the simply brilliant idea of wrapping them around a cube

About eight years ago, the Golem window manager had a pager trick that was the best GUI animation in regards to usability, that I have ever encountered. This animation was very simple, yet very effective in orienting oneself within the virtual desktops.

If one clicked on another workspace, the screen would swoop through all of the desktops in between, on it's way to the "clicked" workspace. Very "spatial," and it really made virtual desktops "work."

Amazingly, Golem was tinier than most tiling WMs, but it was almost as configurable as Enlightenment, and it featured this pager animation trick (and had several others in the works). I think that the only library that it used was Xlib.